Please note: we have been online over ten years, and we want The Trek BBS to continue as a free site. But if you block our ads we are at risk.Please consider unblocking ads for this site - every ad you view counts and helps us pay for the bandwidth that you are using. Thank you for your understanding.

Leonard Nimoy

Welcome! The Trek BBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans. Please login to see our full range of forums as well as the ability to send and receive private messages, track your favourite topics and of course join in the discussions.

If you are a new visitor, join us for free. If you are an existing member please login below. Note: for members who joined under our old messageboard system, please login with your display name not your login name.

But mainly in situations where NX-01 was the only ship that could get there fast enough, so it was more a matter of lacking alternatives.

True, but it still would have been nice to see Earth military ships in an outer-system defense role instead of Starfleet in The Expanse, or in an Earth-orbit defense role instead of... nothing, in Zero Hour.

Zero Hour really was odd. No ships in Earth orbit at all, and the only ship near the Sol system was an Andorian warship. And this is with a year's warning that aliens are preparing to attack the planet with similar but legally distinct Death Star. And to make matters worse, at the end of Storm Front Part 2 when the NX-01 returns to Earth, there is a massive combined fleet of Earth and Vulcan ships in orbit to greet them.

^No odder than TMP, where an unfinished starship in drydock was Earth's only defense against V'Ger. Or The Best of Both Worlds, where the Sol system's entire defense force seemed to consist of three small Martian ships.

__________________Christopher L. Bennett Homepage -- Site update 11/16/14 including annotations for "The Caress of a Butterfly's Wing" and overview for DTI: The Collectors

True, but then where did all those starships come from in Storm Front and why weren't they on hand in Zero Hour? Even if we accept that was a fleet amassed in response to the arrival of the Xindi weapon, there should still have been something in Zero Hour. Doesn't Starfleet usually keep a minimum of one ship in the Sol system, or is there nothing when the Enterprise is away?

It's a TV show. Nothing exists until someone writes it into an episode.

Yeah, like bathrooms. You going to argue that the ship never had any until we saw one?

Besides -- ensigns had one rank pip, lieutenants had two, commanders had three, captains had four. How do you fit a lieutenant commander into that?

Just like on TNG: Pips of a different color.

Exactly. Naval Captain in our navy has four broad braids, Cdr has three broad braids, and LCdr has two broad braids with a narrow one in the middle. Different coloured pips would work well to convey the same idea.

The "only ship in the sector" trope makes sense in the vastness of deep space, but it was never a good idea when applied to Earth.

I think I can do you one better. Star Trek 5! Starfleet had to send a ship that was literally falling to pieces to a planet that was on the border of Romulan, Klingon and Federation space, because there were no other ships capable of being taxi for Kirk and crew while the A was put in shape (come on, the Excelsior was in the next berth, Starfleet couldn't have transferred Kirk and crew to that ship for the mission)?

^Kirk was promoted from captain to admiral prior to TMP and again prior to TWOK. But it's generally accepted that he was a rear admiral, which in the US Navy was the equivalent of the commodore rank once that rank was phased out -- i.e. just one step up from captain rather than two.

Haha, wow I think I did actually consider that, but somehow felt it wasn't valid because "commodore" was being phased out or something... I dunno. Clearly it was past my bedtime!

But yeah, Archer seems to be giving Kirk a run for his money in the department of Freaking Awesome, so similarities in rank history would not surprise me.

It's a TV show. Nothing exists until someone writes it into an episode.

Yeah, like bathrooms. You going to argue that the ship never had any until we saw one?

Besides -- ensigns had one rank pip, lieutenants had two, commanders had three, captains had four. How do you fit a lieutenant commander into that?

Just like on TNG: Pips of a different color.

Exactly. Naval Captain in our navy has four broad braids, Cdr has three broad braids, and LCdr has two broad braids with a narrow one in the middle. Different coloured pips would work well to convey the same idea.

And, hasn't Trek already introduced the concept of half-a-pip? So a Lieutenant Commander could have two-and-a-half pips.

Well, the novels have established that there was a lieutenant commander's rank in Earth Starfleet at least after the timeframe of the series. But I see no reason to retcon the existence of one during the series. I mean, when are we ever going to see another story set during the series' timeframe? The novels are far beyond that timeframe now, there are no anthologies in the foreseeable future, and nobody's bothered to get the ENT comics license. It's just not something that's ever going to come up, outside of fanfic.

And I don't see why it's desirable. Why insist that Earth Starfleet do everything exactly the same way the UFP Starfleet does? Heck, tons of fans have complained about how it wasn't different enough as it was. But one of the differences that the creators clearly intended it to have was a much simpler rank structure. I see no reason to ignore that conscious change.

__________________Christopher L. Bennett Homepage -- Site update 11/16/14 including annotations for "The Caress of a Butterfly's Wing" and overview for DTI: The Collectors

And I don't see why it's desirable. Why insist that Earth Starfleet do everything exactly the same way the UFP Starfleet does?

If the UFP Starfleet's ranks were distinct, that would be one thing. But they're (at least for the officer ranks) identical to US Navy ranks. I don't see any reason to assume there was a "zig-zag" in the lineage instead of just letting that straight line go through.

Christopher wrote:

Heck, tons of fans have complained about how it wasn't different enough as it was. But one of the differences that the creators clearly intended it to have was a much simpler rank structure. I see no reason to ignore that conscious change.

I'm not convinced it was conscious. I don't recall (nor has anybody posted in the thread that I noticed) any proof from the show that there those ranks didn't exist.

STAR TREK

CSI

ABOUT US

ฉ1999-2013 TrekToday and Christian H๖hne Sparborth. TrekToday and its subsidiary sites are in no way affiliated with CBS Studios Inc. Star Trekฎ, in all its various forms, andrelated marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective holders. Please read the extended copyright notice.